Email to my Mom:

Hahah, great email. I of course have no idea what´s going on with NK or Sotomayer. I have fewer than 100 pages left of Lolita. I am terribly homesick and miserable with the realization that you can fly across the world and still not escape yourself. And there are fewer distractions in developing countries. I guess I´m lonely, irritable and bored. The diarreah stopped though! And I hung my hammock and tonight I might make another tissue paper lampshade for the house (ecuadorians don´t seem to comprehend pantallas, or lampshades.) Miss you, miss America. Reading a buddhist book that says this kind of unsettled loss of former self is brilliant but I feel like no one. No I´m not coming home. Paul and I are building an oven and then I will hopefully seduce some new volunteer with my fabulous banana bread. I bought an alarm clock with the plan to wake up at 530 for an hour and a half of yoga and meditation before breakfast. It ticks all the time and drives me nuts. Gimena told me though that I can put yogurt in a tub of water to refrigerate it though so now I don´t have to eat fucking oatmeal for breakfast. Granola making in a pan with quick oats leaves much to be desired. Last night I got lost in Cayambe after dark and I didn´t like that. It was however unthreatening so please dont worry! They don´t have nuts except for peanuts here. I tried last night to take a bath by boiling 4 pots of water on the stove but it was lukewarm and not worth the trouble. I am going to post this email on my blog if you don´t mind because I don´t want to rewrite the last week. I love you so much and I don´t want you to be sad that I am having a bad week of culture shock and no-friendness. The sheep escaped and they walk around the lawn with the cows now. Paul went to Quito for the weekend and i am going to feed the chickens. There is a sickly one with few feathers, who I tried to put in the ¨hospital¨ which is a chicken-wire coop but whenever I tried to grab him he would shriek and I would shriek and we ran away from each other. Ha. The poetry writing is going slowly and I need to do research. There are no books here. But a million videogame shops. I hate hate hate to admit it but I miss bourgiosie things. Like organic granola and yoga mats and aviator sunglasses and expensive chocolate. Also they don´t appear to eat mushrooms here.